


fuck you, i always looked better in red.

by KilltheDJ



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:28:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29897694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KilltheDJ/pseuds/KilltheDJ
Summary: Sandman's done many things. Staring at his back-from-the-dead ex-boyfriend in the middle of the night isn't one of them.
Relationships: Kobra Kid/Mr. Sandman (Fall Out Boy)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19





	fuck you, i always looked better in red.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this instead of sleeping while desperately trying to keep up with the plot of batwoman so i sincerely apologize <3 in general

In three years, a lot can change. Storms calm, tomorrow comes, the sun rises; simple things, every day, every single day. 

A funeral. A gravestone. A year of mourning that sometimes he doesn’t want to remember but is always going to remember the taste of nicotine sweet on his tongue. Another year of wondering what the hell happened to his life. 

Mr. Sandman is many things. A Killjoy and a Suiteheart is one of them, and a goddamn badass is another, and it’s been three years since he’s had to think about the love of his life dying in the middle of the City that always tried to strangle him. 

It’s been three years, and he’s over it. He doesn’t wear his commitment band anymore because Kobra’s  _ dead  _ and there’s no fucking point in that, and it doesn’t hurt unless a special date comes up. 

On those nights, he goes and reads the journal that he has no right to have, but it’s not like there’s anyone else around to take it from him. 

Either way, he doesn’t try to think about it. 

Right now, he’d be content to lie in his bed or maybe strum a few chords on the acoustic guitar that Benzedrine picked up at some point, or maybe even  _ sleep  _ as he tries (and fails) to do so often. 

But he’s standing behind the opened front door  _ staring  _ because a  _ dead man  _ is right in front of him, looking the same as he did three fucking years ago and Sandman can do a lot of things, but  _ cope with that  _ isn’t one of them. 

“Hi,” Kobra says weakly, smiling awkwardly, hands balled up into fists by his sides and it’s like a burst of color behind his eyes when he remembers that Kobra  _ always  _ used to do that when he was upset. He’s unreasonably upset with  _ himself  _ that he let the memory fade away. 

Maybe that’s just because he doesn’t know what else to do. 

So, obviously, he says just that — “You’re  _ dead.”  _

“Check my pulse, then,” Kobra says, and he sounds  _ desperate,  _ he sounds so desperate that it’s like nails on a chalkboard but Sandman doesn’t know what he’s going to do if he reaches his hand out and - and - and - 

What if that  _ is  _ Kobra? What is  _ the Kobra Kid  _ is standing in front of him, looking just like he did three years ago, the day before he  _ died,  _ confused and desperate for someone to believe him? 

(It’s not like it used to be, it’s  _ three years later,  _ for Witch’s sake, their story is over and Sandman’s come to terms with that, he has, he has,  _ he has,  _ but it’s a little harder to do so with a  _ corpse  _ standing in front of him.) 

Kobra acts for him, shaking fingers taking Sandman’s gloved hand - this doesn’t work with a gloved hand, he doesn’t think - and pressing it to his neck with a grip so tight it  _ hurts.  _ “I’m  _ here.  _ I swear to Destroya I’m here and - and I don’t know why. I don’t know why.” 

When Kobra releases Sandman’s hand, he doesn’t take it back. Instead, his fingers are resting on Kobra’s neck, his thumb in the hollow of Kobra’s collar, and this isn’t  _ like  _ any late-night hallucinations he’d have when he hadn’t gotten out of bed in two weeks and slept even less. This is  _ real.  _

(That scares him more than anything.) 

And then they’re back to  _ staring  _ at each other, and Kobra’s eyes aren’t - they aren’t like they used to be. 

They aren’t the dark brown that Sandman is -  _ was -  _ used to seeing on that face; it’s still brown, but flecked with yellow,  _ electric  _ yellow that glows against the dark backdrop of the moonlight and the sands surrounding them, a graveyard if Sandman’s ever seen one. 

“You’re dead,” Sandman repeats, like it’s the only thing he can form, the only syllables on his tongue. And they are; at least, the only ones that make sense. “You’re dead. You’re dead and - and - and now you’re here.”

Kobra echoes the sentiment. “And now I’m here. And now I don’t know why.” 

“Let me - let me get - let me get Benzedrine.” God,  _ god,  _ he shouldn’t be stuttering so much, but it’s the only thing that makes  _ sense,  _ and Benzedrine, Benze knows how to deal with something like this. 

Benze is the only person he knows that can take the completely impossible, the completely implausible, and believe it without a second thought. Sandman can’t do that. Sandman desperately needs the ability to do that. 

Kobra nods, a dip of his head that lets blond hair fall into unfamiliar eyes, and walks in. 

And maybe that changes everything, because suddenly he doesn’t look like a corpse back from the grave but rather a  _ person,  _ something  _ real,  _ something with a heartbeat and jittery nerves standing awkwardly in the foot of the doorway. 

“My room?” Sandman asks, an old habit, as though Kobra ever familiarized himself with any of the rest of the Suitehearts’ base. Mostly they just fumbled through the walk with half-lidded eyes and, well, it isn’t the time to remember that. 

Kobra nods, again, and he makes his way silently, out of Sandman’s view like a ghost once again, like he’s stuck between  _ then  _ and  _ now.  _ Sandman supposes that he must be, three years after he died, still walking, still  _ looking  _ three years younger for no apparent reason. 

_ 

The walk to Benzedrine’s room isn’t a long one. The stay is just as short. 

The walk  _ back  _ is also short, and yet Sandman’s walking on pins and needles rather than the boots he’s grown so comfortable in over the years. 

“Fascinating,” Benze mumbles, a pep to his step that really shouldn’t be there when they make it to Sandman’s room, from the kitchen to the bunker in one fell swoop and certainly not enough time to get his thoughts together. 

“Yeah, fascinating’s the word for it,” Kobra scoffs, sitting cross-legged on Sandman’s desk, the papers pushed to the side in favor of  _ Kobra  _ and his stupid skinny jeans and his damn  _ boots  _ and the fact that he’s alive and kicking at all. “Not a string of curse words.” 

“Aren’t you happy to be a zombie?” Benze asks, confusion dripping through in what may or may not be sarcasm, poking at Kobra. In the side, in the face, in the  _ neck,  _ in the eye - before Kobra bat his hand away. “I would be happy to be a zombie. A time-displaced zombie, sure, but a zombie nonetheless.” 

“Fuck you. If I’m a zombie then I don’t want to be a time-displaced zombie.” There’s little heat behind the words. Kobra defaults to anger when he doesn’t know what else to do; Sandman  _ knows  _ that. They used to turn banter into arguments just because they didn’t know what else to do. 

Benze hums again. “I’ll have to run some tests. Does anything appear to feel different, seem different? Anything at all?” 

At that, Kobra fidgets, tapping his fingers against the wood of the desk. “No. Nothing that I can tell, at least, other than a killer burn near my heart - there’s just, there’s a scar there, nothing more than a scar - and soreness… Everywhere.” 

“And your eyes are different,” Sandman adds, quiet, not quite sure if it’s his place to even  _ remember  _ that. “They’re, uh - the yellow is new.” 

“Yellow’s always been  _ Poison’s  _ color.” So, the mock pout Kobra gets still makes Sandman want to smile. Damn old habits. 

“Guess it’s yours now, sweetheart.” It just - it slips out. It slips out, and Sandman freezes, and even Benze stops his prodding for a moment before resuming. 

But Kobra doesn’t falter, because for him, only a couple of days ago was Sandman throwing around pet names like they had all the time in the world like Sandman wouldn’t be crafting a widowing band quite soon. “Fuck you  _ twice,  _ I look better in red. I look  _ far  _ better in red, and it’s a crime.” 

“Why, because you woke up from the grave in that shitty mustard yellow shirt?” 

“Correct. It’s _so_ not fashion chic. Why the hell was I buried, anyway?” 

At that, Sandman has no answer, until he remembers that he doesn’t have to make everything revolve around him. “I couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t in charge of it. The Girl was.” 

And  _ oh,  _ perhaps that wasn’t the best thing to say, because Kobra goes rigid, and even Benze stops poking at his chest for a moment to give Kobra some space. An angry, grieving, confused Kobra Kid isn’t a Kobra Kid you want to be irritating. “The Girl? How is she?” 

“I wouldn’t know,” Sandman repeats, and he ought to be a broken record at this point. “She, uh - She never came to visit me. I can’t blame her.” 

It’s not like he was in much of a state to accept company, in the couple of months - the year - following Kobra’s death. Sandman would compare it to… sitting in a black void and drinking a lot of things that he shouldn’t have. 

That’s in the past now. (The past comes back to bite.) 

“I need to find them,” Kobra mumbles, suddenly, his eyes flashing a yellow more  _ vivid  _ and golden than before, taking up the entire iris. “I need to find them.” 

“Find who?” Sandman asks, at the same time Benze mumbles, “Why?” as he takes Sandman’s free hand; an old nervous habit that Benze had sometimes. 

“The  _ others,”  _ Kobra says like it’s obvious. He’s already sliding off Sandman’s desk, frantic, quick motions that take a second or two to catch up with. “They  _ need  _ me, the others, they - I can’t be - I’m not the only one.” 

Sandman’s foolish, but he’s not that foolish. 

He knows that he shouldn’t let a literal  _ zombie  _ walk out of his room with nothing apparently wrong with him other than eyes flashing a completely different color and speed that isn’t quite human. 

He knows that he should be stopping Kobra. He knows that he should be reaching out and grabbing Kobra by the wrist,  _ stop him,  _ make sure that he’s alright and that he’s not just finding any tendril his back-from-the-dead mind can fathom. 

But Sandman’s still  _ foolish,  _ and while he knows that he  _ should  _ be reaching out, he doesn’t. 

He doesn’t, and he lets Kobra walk away. 

**Author's Note:**

> sandman doesn't see kobra for about another year, but he hears things on the radio.
> 
> first, he hears about a ghost crew, that sometimes runners are seeing the trans am on the horizon when that old hunk of junk has been in bli custody for three years. but then it's more than just a car on the horizon; it's poison red hair - when no one's had the gall to dye it that for a while - in a crowd and familiar faces tucked underneath baseball caps and hoodies at markets. and then it's a firefight on route guano where the fabulous killjoys are unmistably, undeniably, alive and kicking. 
> 
> they aren't quite the same. but they're still the fabulous killjoys and that's all they've got.


End file.
